The Legislature reworked election laws last year before, in the face of a citizen referendum, backing down amid charges its work had amounted to voter suppression.

This year, the candidates for secretary of state are reopening the bruising debate.

State Sen. Michele Reagan, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, said she will, if elected, champion parts of the controversial law, such as changes that would allow elections officials to remove voters from the permanent early-voting list and to ban mass ballot collection.

Those were two pieces of House Bill 2305, which the Legislature passed in the waning hours of its 2013 session, as supporters said it was needed to keep elections running smoothly.

Her opponent, Democrat Terry Goddard, said Reagan can't have it both ways by saying she supports some parts of the legislation but dislikes others. The bill required an up-or-down vote, and Reagan voted "yes" with the majority Republicans, he said.

"You can't separate your portions from the bill you said you voted to support," Goddard said last week during a meeting with The Arizona Republic's editorial board.

Their exchanges have put front and center in the race for the state's top elections office key questions about voting in Arizona.

After lawmakers' 2013 vote, a coalition ranging from Latinos to Libertarians to animal-rights supporters quickly formed to halt the bill from becoming law and refer it to this fall's ballot.

The coalition gathered more than 146,000 signatures in less than three months, sending the question to voters.

In February, the Legislature repealed the bill, canceling the need for a referendum. Reagan voted with the majority to undo the very bill lawmakers had passed months earlier.

She defends her votes, saying it was worth it to support the wide-ranging bill because it contained measures she had authored. After the pushback, she said it was important to listen to the public and vote for repeal.

But the status quo, she said, is unacceptable. The election system needs fixes and secretary of state is a great platform from which to make her case, she said.

Although Reagan calls HB 2305 an "unfortunate" mash-up of various election changes, the pieces she wrote deserve another airing, she said.

Robbie Sherwood, who worked with the coalition to reject the changes, disagreed.

"She sponsored some of the worst parts of it," said Sherwood, executive director of ProgressNow Arizona. "They were trying to put roadblocks in front of voters to stop turnout."

John Loredo, a former Democratic state lawmaker and a member of the coalition, predicted Reagan's revival of the issue will hurt her campaign.

"What Reagan ignores is the majority of the people who signed that petition were Republicans and independents," he said of the summer 2013 referendum drive. "This will sink her faster than anything."

Reagan sees it differently. She was appalled by what she called "ballot harvesting" in 2012, when volunteers working to turn out the Latino vote offered to return first-time voters' ballots to the polls. As a result, about 4,500 ballots were carried into Maricopa County elections offices, said Randy Parraz, co-founder of Citizens for a Better Arizona.

"We were attacked for doing our jobs, which is helping people vote," Parraz said. "If we're guilty of something, we're guilty of turning the ballots in."

But many Republicans were troubled by an outside group handling so many ballots and that so many voters would hand over their ballot to a third party.

There were no charges of ballot tampering, but the prospect of boxes of ballots arriving at elections headquarters was enough to win support for Reagan's proposal to limit who can return a voter's ballot.

"I think this could be a defining issue in the race," he said. "People understand people tampering with the ballot."

Reagan said she would make allowances for people to return others' ballots, as long as they had the voter's approval in the form of a signature. This would let someone return a spouse's ballot, for example, or allow them to walk in a ballot cast by a homebound voter.

Goddard, the former state attorney general, said the larger problem with ballot collection was addressed several years ago, after a Republican campaign strategist was found to have held up delivery of batches of ballots in the final weeks of a campaign for strategic reasons. Now, ballots must be returned within 48 hours.

Goddard questions whether Reagan is touting a solution in search of a problem.

"Who is being influenced by this?" he asked. "What is the fraud? Nobody is stealing ballots."

He called ballot collection a "convenience," but said if there were evidence the practice was being abused, he could support limits, such as requiring a signature.

The other key point is the permanent early-voting list.

As chairman of the Senate Elections Committee, Reagan sponsored a bill in 2013 that would allow names to be dropped from the list if the voter got a ballot in the mail but failed to return it for two consecutive primary-and-general-election cycles. It would not disqualify the individuals from voting, but it would require them to go to the polls.

Critics said the measure was aimed at alienating first-time voters, particularly Latinos, who aren't in the habit of voting in every election.

Reagan said she wants to revisit the issue, saying county election officials approached her after the 2012 election requesting the ability to clean up their lists.

Goddard said he read the proposed legislation as cutting off a voter if he or she skipped even one election — which he called unacceptable. If anything, he said, the bill needed clearer language because he reached a different conclusion than supporters.

He acknowledged election officials need the ability to remove names from the list, and offered his own idea.

"It should be evidence based, that they (the voter) are either medically incompetent or have moved (residences)," he said. But, he said, a voter should have a track record of having skipped numerous elections before being dropped from the early-voting list.

Loredo said he's wary of any changes to the list.

"It's called the permanent early-voting list for a reason," he said. "People are signing up because they want to get their ballot (via mail). If they want to skip an election, that's their right."

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8963. Follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

CLOSE

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